


Awakening

by hellkitty



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 16:46:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/725558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for Rage of the Dinobots. a</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awakening

“I think,” the words drifted only faintly into Grimlock’s consciousness, as though flurrying down from a great height, “that this one might actually have survived.” 

Another voice, colder and drier. “Science has no room for uncertainties, Serk-Ket. Of course he has.”

A sensation of movement around him--was he moving, or was the world moving? Grimlock couldn’t tell. He couldn’t feel his body, not really, just a roiling wall of heat and pain that defied shape and control. It was useless, he figured, after a minute, to try and fight that. So he focused his energy--what he could muster--on trying to gather clues. Where he was, who they were, and maybe, maybe, what the slag was going on.

Ser-Ket. The name didn’t ring many bells. But Grimlock had never been deep into intel. All that meant was that she didn’t command ground troops. That still left a lot of ground to cover.

“My mechs,” Grimlock said, having to force each of the syllables out of a vocalizer that seemed clogged, somehow, dense with strangeness. “Where are they?”

The one voice, Ser-Ket’s, bubbled with mirth. “Oh, you’ll be re-united soon enough.”

“I find the taunting unncessary,” the other voice said.

“I find it totally necessary, Shockwave,” Ser-Ket retorted. “Besides. It’s merely the truth. Not like it’s even a secret.”

A neutral, dismissive sound , not even a grunt.

At least from Shockwave. Because Shockwave? Grimlock knew that name, sure enough. Enough to know that the last place you wanted to be, unable to move or think straight, was in a room with Shockwave.

“What’s...not...secret?” The words seemed to hurt, like shoving them through a space too small.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Ser-Ket said, the tone patent and condescending.

Grimlock forced through the pain, reaching into it with the grim resolve of someone driving their arm into a blade. He had to get moving. He had to get free. “Find out now!” 

There was a ripping sound, and then a series of snapping pops, like rivets bursting, and a louder sound, a roar, that tore pain free from his vocalizer. 

His optics suddenly onlined. Or, no, the shield that had been over them, a simple blinding mask, fell away, clattering to the floor at his feet.

That weren’t his feet anymore. They were his colors, yes, and roughly the same mass, but they were not his, having bits of kibble and transformation seams where there hadn’t been any before.

His gaze swiveled upward, optics blazing over his mask. There were things you didn’t do, violations you didn’t perform, and forced reformatting was on the very, very top of that list. It was worse than desecrating a corpse, stripping it for parts. ‘What have you done?’ boiled in his vocalizer, but he knew the answer already, knew the question was trite and dry.

So he didn’t use words, scorning them, letting another roar tear from his chassis, that echoed around the plasma barrier between himself and the two Decepticons.

“Tsk,” Shockwave’s voice. Grimlock revolved to it, to the single amber optic in the purple bell. “Is that truly the best you can do? Noise?”

“Now who’s taunting?” Ser-Ket said. Grimlock took her in, the sweeping arm kibble: a flyer, definitely, but he couldn’t figure what kind. It didn’t matter. She’d be dead in a moment, as soon as he unsubspaced his gun.

His gun.

Which wasn’t there.

Shockwave circled to one side, bluntly ignoring the other Decepticon, optic focused on Grimlock’s face, almost expectantly. Too comfortable, Grimlock thought, on the other side of the plasma. “Come now, Grimlock.” He managed to sound toneless and yet somehow insulting at the same time, as if emotion simply weren’t worth the effort.

Grimlock rushed forward, blinded with rage, slamming against the plasma barrier. It sizzled against him, doing no damage other than sending shocks of pain straight to his sensors. He fell back, stumbling over the snapped chains--they had chained him, like a beast--his body spasming, even as he forced it to its feet again, charging.

“You know you want to,” Shockwave said. “Transform.”

He bounced into the plasma wall again, roaring in frustration more than pain. He’d wanted to transform, the idea burgeoning in his cortex like a growing need. But Shockwave’s words sucked the marrow out of the good of that idea. He pounded a futile fist against the barrier, cursing with all the power of years in the military, decades in war. If words were weapons, Shockwave would be riddled with wounds.

He wasn’t. He merely stood, calculatingly on the other side of the plasma, head tilting from side to side, studying, and owning Grimlock with that gaze. He knew what Grimlock looked like, now. He knew Grimlock’s alt mode, when Grimlock didn’t know it himself. 

Shockwave managed a showy sigh. “He survived,” he said to Ser-Ket, as though to an underling who should be taking notes. “But he appears to be a failure.”

“I. Am no. Failure.”

“Oh? Is it Autobot leadership to lose your entire unit?”

The plates shifted, even without Grimlock’s conscious command, something huge and red with rage boiling up in him as though volcanic. He felt dangerous, even to himself, as though rage would tear him apart, shudder his own armor plates asunder. He roared again, through a huge mouth, this time, armed with massive razor-edged dentae, a heavy tail, like a bludgeon, swinging behind him. 

“Impressive,” Ser-Ket piped up, from a safer distance, merely echoing, poorly, Shockwave’s coldness.

Grimlock roared again at her, lunging at the barrier, falling back and then regrouping, planting his clawed foot to swing that massive tail against the plasma. The room itself shuddered under the force of it.

Shockwave cocked his bell. “Insufficient,” he said.

“Insufficient?” Ser-Ket had jumped back at the last assault, clutching the datapad in front of her. 

“He resists the full power I have given him.”

“I. Resist. EVERYTHING!” He wasn’t sure the words made sense, pushed this time through a fog of rage, rather than pain. Claws tore at the plasma, dragging long lines of sparks down around him.

Shockwave huffed, stepping over to a console and then, almost casually, flicking a switch.

The plasma chamber Grimlock was in went white, and then blackness overwhelmed him again, sucking him down like a whirlpool back to unconsciousness. He clawed at them from the seed of impotent rage at the last words that spun down with him, Shockwave’s voice, like night on the moon, “Too much intellect, still. Cortical reprogramming required.”


End file.
